Electronic Frontier Foundation

[tain]

From http://www.eff.org/share/petition/ :

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is on a rampage, launching legal attacks against average Americans from coast to coast. After over 18,000 lawsuits and counting against P2P users, file sharing has continued to increase rapidly. Meanwhile, music fans, like 12 year-old Brittany LaHara, college student Cassi Hunt, and parent of five Cecilia Gonzalez, are being forced to pay thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member lawsuits, and many other innocent individuals are being caught in the crossfire.

This irrational crusade is not generating a single penny for the artists that the RIAA claims to protect. The RIAA should be working to create a rational, legal means by which its customers can take advantage of file sharing technology and pay a fair price for the music they love. With artists increasingly turning against the lawsuits, momentum may be shifting in favor of a better way forward.

Copyright law shouldn't make criminals out of more than 60 million Americans — tell Congress that it's time to stop the madness!

We have over 85,000 signatures so far - this is amazing! If we can get 100,000 signatures, we will deliver the petition to the Senate and House Commerce and Judiciary Commitees.

Text of the petition:

To The United States Congress:

We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA's tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing.

We condemn the RIAA's choice to force the family of a 12 year-old girl to forfeit $2,000 - money that could have gone to feed, clothe and educate this honor student. We stand with the retirees, parents, children and others who have been caught in the RIAA's line of fire.

We respect reasonable copyright law, but we strongly oppose copyright enforcement that comes at the expense of privacy, due process and fair application of the law.

We urge you, as our representatives in Congress, to stop this madness.

We oppose the recording industry's decision to attack the public, bankrupt its customers and offer false amnesty to those who would impugn themselves. We call instead for a real amnesty: the development of a legal alternative that preserves file-sharing technology while ensuring that artists are fairly compensated.

In signing this petition, we formally request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as representatives of the public interest, be included in any upcoming hearings regarding the proper scope of copyright enforcement in the digital age.

We sincerely thank you for your time.

[Scubar]

Heres something amusing i read today.

RIAA sues dead 'pirates'

Bluebeard trembles in his grave

By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 25 April 2006, 07:00

IF YOU believe the RIAA, Gertrude Walton has been apparently down loading more than 700 songs off peer-to-peer networks and deserves to have the book thrown at her.

The 83 year old Granny has been an extremely persistent offender and has the gall to ignore demands from the RIAA to pay thousands of dollars for her life of piracy.

It is not the first time that the body has accused grandmothers of being music pirates before and dragged them into court before demanding huge wodges of cash from their pension books. However, the Walton case is particularly unusual because Walton has been stone dead since December 2004.

The RIAA has found the first case of an undead music pirate who has apparently risen from the grave to nick music.

Being a zombie has apparently endowed Mrs Walton with new abilities. When she was alive she would not have a PC in the house and didn’t even know how to use one. She certainly did not download anything before she croaked. Since her death, according to the RIAA, she had adopted the name 'smittenkitten' and had downloaded more than 700 tracks stored on her computer.

Of course being a zombie she never replied to the RIAA letters. Her daughter sent the RIAA her mum's death certificate but that was not enough for its briefs to believe that Mrs Walton had not got better.

When members of her Majesty's loyal media asked the RIAA about its relentless pursuit of pirates beyond the grave, a spokesman said that it may have made a slight mishtake. The case will be dropped.

Edited April 28, 2006 by ScubaSteve